“Buy an IKEA pad for the surface you want, never to rescue a sagging mattress. Shoulder pain on a firm bed calls for the memory foam Nordberget, while a wish for softness without sinking points to the Nisseholm.”
All figures come from IKEA’s UK product pages, checked on 4 October 2026. IKEA does not publish a density for the Nisseholm’s cold foam.
Memory foam or springy foam
The foam type decides how an IKEA pad feels far more than its depth does. Memory foam, used only in the Nordberget, softens with warmth and moulds slowly around shoulders and hips, which is what a side sleeper on a hard mattress needs. The high-resilience foam in the Nisseholm pushes back straight away, so it suits people who turn over a lot. The plain polyurethane foam in the Näsfjället and Nopakte is the cheapest of the three and the first to flatten.
Research points the same way. In a 2018 crossover study published in PLOS One, healthy men slept on a high-rebound topper and on a 3.5 cm memory foam one, and in a separate daytime test the muscle effort needed to roll over was 53% to 66% lower on the springy topper. The springy topper in that study was made of polyethylene fibre, not foam, and the study was small and funded by its maker, so read it as a pointer towards the Nisseholm’s kind of feel rather than a test of it.
How deep is deep enough
IKEA’s pads run from 2.5 cm to 5 cm, which is thin next to the 7 to 10 cm toppers in our best mattress toppers ranking. Only the Nisseholm reaches 5 cm. The 4.5 cm Nordberget still ranks first because its memory foam moulds around the shoulder and hip, and that pressure relief is what most people buying a topper for a firm mattress are after. The National Bed Federation is blunt about the limits of any topper: “A mattress topper isn’t a quick fix for a mattress that’s past its prime.” If your mattress has a dip you can see, no IKEA pad will level it, and our best IKEA mattresses guide is the better place to start.
Buying an IKEA mattress with a topper
IKEA sells its Valevåg and Vesteröy pocket sprung mattresses as sets with a Nisseholm, Nordberget or Näsfjället pad. The set is a convenience rather than a discount. A Valevåg double with a Nordberget cost £308 when we checked, exactly the two list prices added together. Buying the pieces separately lets you pair any pad with any IKEA mattress, and the 365-night Sleep on it exchange applies to the mattress only, not to the pad.
Fit, straps and washing
All four pads are cut to IKEA’s British sizes, single 90x190, double 135x190, king 150x200 and super king 180x200 cm, so they match a UK mattress rather than a continental 140x200. None has corner straps or a non-slip base, so a fitted sheet deep enough to wrap both mattress and pad is what keeps it in place. IKEA also suggests laying one wide topper across two single mattresses pushed together to hide the gap between them. Two UK singles make 180x190 cm, so the super king pad, 180x200 cm, covers them with 10 cm left over at the foot, which a deep fitted sheet tucks away. Every cover zips off and goes in the machine at 60°C, the temperature the NHS recommends for washing bedding if you are allergic to house dust mites. If what you need is a barrier against spills, a topper is the wrong product, and our mattress protector ranking covers that job.
